The manufacture of semiconductor integrated circuits typically involves highly complex, time consuming and costly processes which, with continually narrower line width requirements, must be achieved with an ever increasing degree of precision. Within such processes the etching of semiconductor material (e.g. silicon) often entails the use of a chemical bath to which masked semiconductor material is exposed, so as to etch moats or trenches in the surface of a wafer. In a typical chemical etch process, both the rate of etch and the depth of etch are parameters critical to the successful formation of an intended substrate topography. While it is desirable to enhance these parameters in order to reduce overall processing time and cost, it is necessary to maintain accurate control over etch rate and depth, so that the target surface geometry will be achieved. To this end, for etching moats in a silicon wafer, commercially available alkali hydroxide solution (e.g. potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution) typically having a controlled strength on the order of 45.0% w/w, (w/w=weight of alkali hydroxide/weight of aqueous (H.sub.2 O) solution) is routinely used, because of its ability to provide well established and reproducible silicon etch rates, depths and moat geometries. Undesirably, however, these performance characteristics are limited (etch rate on the order of 0.022-0.036 mil/min and etch depth on the order of 0.5 to 5 mils), so that the overall wafer fabrication process in which such an etching solution is employed is necessarily constrained.